12
Origins of the frumentarii
The existence of the Augustan postal, road, and communications infrastructure, combined with the centralization and absolutism developing in the new imperial system, created an environment perfect for spawning an internal security service. It is possible to identify from the first century ad onwards a body based in the capital that acted as an internal security agency throughout the Empire. This unit was called the frumentarii, and it was housed in the Castra Peregrina or “Foreigners’ Camp” on the Caelian Hill in Rome. These men were legionary soldiers who acted as couriers between the provincial capitals and Rome, but who could also be assigned duties that included tax collecting, espionage, and political assassination.
The origins of this organization, which some scholars have come to call the “Roman Secret Service,” are obscure, but then we would expect this of a secret intelligence organization. Its activities are so little known to students of the Roman world, even the name of their agents, the frumentarii, does not rate its own entry in the Oxford Classical Dictionary. And yet this institution is exactly where we look for evidence of intelligence activities from the first to third centuries of the Common Era. While they were not the sole practitioners of intelligence activities, they were the first new institution created since the Republic for keeping the emperor informed of activities in the provinces, his capital, and his court.1
There seems to be no agreement among scholars about when the frumentarii became involved in intelligence activities, but a major study of their origins suggests that a minor bureaucratic reform by the Emperor Domitian set them up as gatherers of intelligence, couriers and arresting agents, enforcers and assassins.2 The label “secret service” is a modem, descriptive one rather than an official title for an ancient institution that has no exact modem parallel. Even in modern times, the term “secret service” has more than one meaning: it can indicate the detective arm of government, a police force concerned with internal security, and the protection of high-level officials, or a domestic intelligence gathering arm. There is also a vast difference between how these duties are executed by the FBI, MI5, or the former KGB and Stasi. While I do not believe the Roman frumentarii functioned exactly like any modem intelligence service, I do believe that the sum total of their duties qualifies them for being labeled a domestic intelligence organization and thus secret service is not such a terribly inaccurate label as some would suggest.
The first distinction we should make about the frumentarii is that they were an entirely military organization. The Emperor Domitian took the supply section of the Roman Army and formed it into an information service staffed with soldiers whose original functions had been the purchase and distribution of grain, frumentum, for the troops, and thus they were called frumentarii.3 The new organization is thus most analogous to modem military intelligence organizations. Soldiers had probably already been serving on the headquarters staff of provincial governors even before Domitian. Any emperor might have realized their potential as intelligence officers, but an emperor as perceptive and suspicious as Domitian was even more susceptible to building such an internal security organization. These men were constantly moving on logistical assignments and were in a position to watch over the army, the imperial bureaucracy, and the local population. They could report back on any matter that was of interest to the emperor. That the emperor came to rely on these soldiers is shown by the fact that the frumentarii began to replace the speculatores as messengers, spies, and even as secret police.4
Domitian established an operational headquarters for his new service on the Caelian Hill in the Castra Peregrina.5 The camp accommodated the new intelligence officers and any other noncommissioned officers in from the provinces and stationed at Rome. The barracks provision for the frumentarii at the Castra Peregrina was sufficient for about 400 men, or 12 or 13 from each legion in the empire. This might represent about half the total complement if a similar number could be found at their respective provincial capitals at any one time.6 The frumentarii were still registered with their provincial legions, but they were now subject to a different chain of command. While in Rome, they formed a regularly organized unit, the numerus frumentariorum, with its own junior officers and centurions.7 Now, however, they served the central government under the direction of a commander who was a senior legionary centurion. In recognition of the unusual provenance of his troops, he bore the title princeps peregrinorum (Chief of the Foreigners) – and thus the name of their camp.8 Except for one isolated inscription in the second century, the evidence for men holding the post of princeps peregrinorum dates to the third century and their sudden prominence may be partly due to their services as intelligence officers.9
Recruitment
German scholars once thought that the men were recruited exclusively from the western (i.e., the ‘less-barbaric”) provinces, implying that they were an elite corps which was turned into a kind of Roman SS, but this theory has long since been discredited.10 The frumentarii were very much like all other Roman soldiers in their recruitment and career. They were recruited locally from the provincial garrisons. All legions sent frumentarii to Rome, and they might be from anywhere in the Empire. The evidence clearly shows that they were taken from both eastern and western provinces. They were also recruited from the middle classes as well as from the lower classes in provinces that were barely Romanized.
Membership in the Roman secret service was no more a fast track to success and promotion than being in military intelligence is today. A study of the origins and careers of the men has noted that although some advancement was evident, few who rose from the ranks were ever promoted to a higher equestrian office. Those who, upon enlistment, were commissioned as centurions had better prospects of advancement, but even these lucky few never made it higher than an equestrian governorship in a small, insignificant province.11 Not until the third century, under the Severan emperors, did agents become senators and praetorian prefects. In one case, M. Oclatinius Adventus, who had been a speculator, a centurio frumentarius, a princeps peregrinorum, and finally the praetorian prefect, became consular colleague of the emperor, but this was considered scandalous.12 The man was known to be illiterate, and the standing joke at the time was that he had been a scout though he could not see, and an intelligence officer though he could not read. Other than this exception, an agent’s career was no more promising than any other noncommissioned appointment.
Duties
The end product of this bureaucratic change by Domitian was a large pool of manpower available for intelligence duties at the disposal of the imperial government. Like the speculatores before them, these security officers appear in many capacities, but their three main duties were as couriers, tax collectors, and policemen. As couriers they carried intelligence to and from Rome and were among the most important users of the state postal system. They had all the rights of requisition to which state officials on business were entitled. We should not forget the importance of the cursus publicus as a means of escape. The Emperor Macrinus (ad 217–218), fleeing after his defeat to the Severans in ad 218, disguised himself as a frumentarius and was given unquestioned access to the road system in attempting his getaway.13
The frumentarii’s original responsibility had been to procure grain for the military, a duty that increased in importance in the third century ad when the emperor, due to monetary inflation, established the collection of taxes in kind, which meant that provincials paid their taxes in grain rather than cash. The frumentarii regulated the grain supply for the army, but not for the city of Rome itself; that was the preserve of the praefectus annonae, the prefect of the urban grain supply. This connection with the grain supply gave the frumentarii permanent posts at Portus, the port of Rome. They worked with the prefect along the Appian Way, which stretched from Rome down to the grain port of Puteoli near Naples.14 These duties were important to the administration of the Empire, but officially they had nothing to do with the collection of intelligence other than that they put officials in key places to watch and listen. In other words, the job was merely a cover for their intelligence duties. The task that has attracted the most attention from both ancient writers and modem scholars was their espionage work once they were seconded to the capital. These men became most notorious to later ages because of their involvement in spying. While we cannot state categorically that they served as imperial spies from the very beginning, nevertheless their potential use in espionage did not long escape the attention of emperors, who cared about the control and protection of their thrones.
The first documented evidence of frumentarii as detectives actually comes late, in the reign of Hadrian, who had them informing on his friends in the imperial court. The wife of one of these men frequently wrote to her husband complaining that he spent too much time in the city enjoying himself and never came home to her. Hadrian found this out through his spies (per frumentarios) and so when the husband requested a furlough, Hadrian chided him for being too fond of the baths and his pleasures. The man was shocked and asked whether his wife had been writing to the emperor, too.15
By the late second and early third centuries extensive evidence exists for this sort of prying. No one, high or low, escaped the surveillance of the frumentarii, and they lived up to their reputation as snoops. Prominent generals, lowly Christians, senators, subversives – they all came under the scrutiny of these dreaded agents. In Rome, the frumentarii appear to have worked closely with the urban police force. In fact, their headquarters on the Caelian Hill was across the street from a station of the vigiles.16
A small amount of evidence even exists that connects the frumentarii to tax collecting. The evidence is slim, but it seems to suggest they were among those who enforced the collection of taxes on certain professions and customs duties along and within imperial frontiers. Christians complained that these agents kept the list of Christians subject to the tax levied on degrading professions.17 The frumentarii have left evidence around areas where harbor duties, the portoria, were collected.18 Tax collection work explains why Greek provincials in the third century nicknamed them kollectiones, or revenuers. W.G. Sinnigen believes their engagement in espionage work earned them the title of curiosi (snoops), but later scholarship has suggested the men in question were not frumentarii.19 Although many of these activities were not intelligence-related, their enforcement powers no doubt enabled these men to extract information from almost anybody when they needed it.
Their secret service duties, besides investigation and arrest, eventually included political assassination.20 Frumentarii were used as assassins under Commodus and Didius Julianus. Under Commodus (ad 180–192) the prefect of the guard ordered them to eliminate one of the emperor’s favorites. They escorted the man home, where he was executed per frumentarios, that is, by a frumentarius.21 Didius Julianus sent a senior centurion, Aquilius, as an assassin to eliminate Pescennius Niger. When the plot was discovered, Niger, the governor of Syria, and Septimius Severus, the governor in Illyricum, both revolted against the emperor, and Severus became the next emperor.22 How the power of these men was used or abused by their employers depended upon the emperor. Alexander Severus (ad 222–235) is praised for selecting only honest and reliable men for his service.23 The Historia Augusta also speaks of their use as spies by the Emperors Macrinus and Gallienus.24 We know that Macrinus particularly appreciated the frumentarii, and that he promoted his own career with their help before he became emperor. Once on the throne, he sent secret agents to spy on his soldiers’ private lives. When he discovered two of them committing adultery with his maidservant, Macrinus punished the guilty by having them stuffed inside live oxen that had been cut open, so that only the soldiers’ heads protruded and they could talk to each other.25 An interesting piece of ancient gossip, but of little relevance to internal security.
Two early third-century sources confirm the use of the frumentarii as assassins. Herodian says that his contemporary, Septimius Severus, made use of frumentarii as assassins.26 And Cassius Dio attributes the rise of Ulpius Julianus and Julianus Nestor to the praetorian prefecture under Caracalla to their previous service as princeps peregrinorum, when they had been “of great use to him in satisfying his unholy curiosity.”27 Dio also seems to characterize as spying the service of M. Oclatinius Adventus as a centurion of the frumentarii and princeps peregrinorum under Severus. Adventus, too, reached the heights of the praetorian prefecture under Caracalla; he went on to refuse the imperial throne itself, but to accept the prefecture of Rome and an ordinary consulship from Macrinus.28
The frumentarii were employed as policemen to watch over those Roman citizens who had made a legal appeal to the emperor. The soldier who watched over St Paul in Rome when he was awaiting trial was a frumentarius.29 As secret police agents, the frumentarii participated in the persecution of Christians. They were among the chief agents who spied on them and had them arrested. In a passage that vividly reflects the Christian dread of the secret service agent, Eusebius reports how a frumentarius hunted down a Christian named Dionysius, who was later martyred. Dionysius waited at home for four days expecting the arrival of the arresting agent. Meanwhile, the frumentarius searched high and low, including the roads, rivers, and fields – anywhere he suspected the Christian was hidden or walking – but never thought of checking his house and thus never found him. Dionysius was able to escape with the help of the Christian underground.30 In one of his letters, St Cyprian writes of the frumentarii sent to arrest him and to bring him before the magistrate. Cyprian learned this from his faithful followers, who operated their own intelligence network during the persecutions, and went into hiding.31 In the Acts of the Christian Martyrs we read about Christians being arrested or guarded by soldiers who, in many instances, may have been frumentarii.
Because of their clandestine work, the methods of the frumentarii have remained obscure. Although no source states that they were involved in plain-clothes operations, the Romans were familiar enough with agents provocateurs for us to suggest that when entrusted with delicate or confidential assignments, the frumentarii went underground. It is difficult, however, to distinguish in the sources which “soldiers without uniforms,” or undercover agents, were frumentarii, since soldiers were regularly seconded for police duties.32 We know that in certain capacities, as couriers especially, they were not operating surreptitiously but instead wore uniforms and carried ensigns. Under certain circumstances, then, the government advertised the presence of these agents to remind their subjects that they owed them the respect due to the power of Rome.
Frumentarii could perform whatever police tasks the central government assigned to them, in addition to their main duties. In inscriptions they appear as prison guards and supervisors of labor camps attached to the mines, where condemned men did forced labor. A labor camp under Caracalla was commanded by a centurion of the frumentarii,33 Other bureaucrats and noncommissioned officers might also be called upon to serve as spies, policemen, tax collectors, couriers, or building supervisors, but the frumentarii represented something different and essential that set their corps apart from others affiliated with either governors’ staffs or the imperial capital.34
There has been some scholarly argument recently about whether the frumentarii served on the staffs of provincial governors.35 Norman Austin and Boris Rankov believe that the frumentarii soon acquired a dual loyalty to the governors’ staffs to which they had individually been seconded from the legions, and to their communal unit in Rome. Rankov believes that attachment to the emperor for special projects does not necessarily preclude an attachment to the officium of a provincial governor. He argues that local recruitment would have eliminated any mechanism by which the emperor could have controlled who was taken and used as a spy. He deemphasizes the role of the frumentarii in espionage and sees their primary role rather as simply carrying messages. As couriers, they served the provincial governors as much as the emperors. They were members of both the officium consularis and the Castra Peregrina in Rome. These roles were complementary. They shuttled between the two carrying messages – when in the provinces they did the bidding of governors, and when in Rome, the emperor could use them for spying or even murder.36
J.C. Mann, on the other hand, makes a very strong argument that a frumentarius often served in provinces far removed from that in which his legion was stationed. His enrollment in a legion was a mere formality, and according to Mann, there is no evidence that he served at his legion’s headquarters or had any formal duties with his legion. Frumentarii were thus distinct from the ordinary enlisted man. Operating under the immediate orders of a centurio frumentarius, he would have served the emperor and not the governor. In fact, when transferred to a governor’s officium, he no longer ranked as a frumentarius.37 Even when promoted to centurio frumentarius, he would continue to work directly for the emperor and therefore could be “clearly distinguished from all other men in the public service of Rome during the principate.” When inscriptions record men being promoted from frumentarius to beneficiarius consularis, it is probably because they were being transferred to the governor’s office. The deciding factor may be that the emperor might assign him the duty of assassinating someone, including the governor. That would certainly bring any dual loyalty to an abrupt end.38
What kind of men became security agents and what was the attitude of Rome’s subjects to them? Funerary inscriptions often describe their human qualities as loyal friends and devoted husbands, fathers, and sons, but this is the language of eulogy. Their duties did not endear them to the general public. Even in the most enlightened periods, Roman administrators could be arbitrary, authoritarian, and corrupt, especially when they had an interest in collecting imperial revenues or in detecting subversion. Even if the frumentarii had all been incorruptible, they would still have been despised. At the time of Septimius Severus, they are described thus: “All the provinces lay cowering and enslaved by fear since many spies went round all the cities listening to what people were saying. It was impossible to think or speak freely, when all temperate and just liberty of speech was destroyed and everyone trembled at his own shadow.”39 Very little of this snooping concerned international affairs or was keeping the emperor informed on foreign situations. The emperors were interested in their own safety, and they employed their main intelligence resource to gather gossip and information about palace intrigues, some of which may have constituted threats to their authority. The Emperor Gallienus instructed the frumentarii, in their role as secret agents, to report to him everything that any high officials said about him. Certainly precaution against possible conspiracy was a legitimate concern, but an assignment of this type could be easily misused.40 Employment of such agents thus varied from reign to reign in both frequency and type. Yet the insidious aspect of their work never entirely disappeared. The frumentarii are mentioned in the Historia Augusta as dispatch riders, yet the message they carried was that anyone who aided Maximinus Thrax should be listed as public enemies.41
Scholars have challenged the designation of the frumentarii as a Roman secret service, because they were not terribly efficient and because many of their activities had nothing to do with intelligence gathering. Their power came not just from their individual duties, but also from the number of functions they touched upon. The emperor and the army regarded the frumentarii, the cursus publicus with its posting stations, and the taxation system as a single integrated unit. When one combines all the individual duties that an emperor might assign, the frumentarii exercised powers that might in modem times be shared by military intelligence, the Post Office, the FBI, and the IRS. This is a frightening prospect. The principal duties of the frumentarii touched on all of these functions in a way that resembles the intelligence services of the East, which had preceded the Roman network by centuries 42
Their demise
By the third century, under increased pressure to guarantee the flow of revenue in kind and to protect the security of an increasingly impoverished and disintegrating state, the frumentarii became hateful to Rome’s subjects. In addition, the temptations to exceed their authority grew larger. Under the Severan dynasty, for example, peasants in Asia Minor complained about arbitrary arrests and exactions made by frumentarii and their associates.43 An inscription from the province of Asia Minor even honors a centurio frumentarius who, although he had the opportunity to do so, did not oppress the provincials.44 According to the historian Aurelius Victor, frumentarii were widely disdained as a plague by the last quarter of the third century.45 Their snooping had become unbearable and their general conduct, at least in fiscal matters, resembled that of a plundering army. Political persecutions scared both the guilty and the innocent. In their pursuit of political criminals they penetrated the cities and villages, searched private homes, and exacted bribes. This was especially true in connection with the frequent military expeditions of the emperor.46 Frumentarii appeared in villages requisitioning goods, levying fines, and generally squeezing the peasants beyond endurance.
In short, the frumentarii were an essential intelligence-gathering tool of the central government up to the reign of Diocletian (ad 293–312).47 He disbanded them because of the endless complaints he received from his subjects, but as disliked as they were, no emperor was about to give up such an essential source of intelligence. And so while eliminating the frumentarii with one hand, he created a new intelligence arm with the other. These new spies, the agentes in rebus, were more insidious than the frumentarii had ever been.
Notes
1. For entries in other classical dictionaries on the frumentarii, see: H.O. Fiebiger, “Frumentarii,” RE 7 (1912), cols. 1690–224; W. Krenkel, “frumentarii,” Lexicon der Alten Welt (Zurich and Munich: Artemis Verlag, 1990), p. 1009; D. Vaglieri, “Frumentarii,” Dizionario Epigrafico di Antichità Romane 3 (1922), p. 221.
2. The standard works remain: W.G. Sinnigen, “The Roman Secret Service,” CJ 57 (1961), pp. 65–72; W.G. Sinnigen, “Two Branches of the Late Roman Secret Service,” AJPh 80 (1959), pp. 238–54; W.G. Sinnigen, “Chiefs of Staff of the Roman Secret Service,” Byz Zeit 57 (1964), pp. 78–105.
3. Dvomik, Origins of Intelligences Services, p. 101 connects the, frumentarii with civilian grain dealers during the Republic, ignoring the military reform that made them available as intelligence agents. For a much clearer account, see W.G. Sinnigen, “Origins of the Frumentarii,” MAAR (1962), pp. 211–24; Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 65; R. Paribeni, “Dei Milites Frumentarii dell’ Approvvigionamento della Corte Imperiale,” Röm Mitt 20 (1905), pp. 310–20, who distinguishes more carefully between frumentarii (the soldiers) and negotiatores frumentarii, or frumentatores. Evidently, the same transformation took place in Sweden under Gustav Adolph, where military intelligence was created out of the supply staff. Gichon, “Military intelligence in the Roman Army,” p. 168.
4. See O. Hirschfeld, Sitzung bei Berlin Akad (1891), p. 866, n. 108, although he attributes the change to Trajan. R. Paribeni, “Dei Milites Frumentarii,” Röm Mitt 20 (1905), pp. 310–20 begins espionage activities with Hadrian. See also G. Henzen, “Sui militi peregrini e frumentarii,” Bulletino dell’ Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1851), pp. 113–21; G. Henzen, “Le castra peregrinorum ed i frumentarii,” in Bulletino dell’ Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica (1884), pp. 21–9.
5. Baillie Reynolds, “Troops Quartered in the Castra Peregrinorum,” pp. 168–89. Their headquarters were discovered embedded in the foundation of the Church of St Stefano Rotondo, less than a five-minute walk from the Colosseum. The outer walls of the building lie outside the round walls of the Church on the Caelian Hill. See Coarelli, Guida Arcaeologica di Roma, p. 180 and the notice in the Los Angeles Times, 4 May 1972, “Spies Found.” Cf. P.K. Baillie Reynolds, Journal of Roman Studies 13 (1923), pp. 168–89, and A.M. Colini, Storia e topografia del celio nell’antichità (Atti Pont Serie 3, Mem. 7, 1944), pp. 240–5. CIL 6.3052 is a graffito scratched by a frumentarius on the wall of another such station in the city. S.J. de Laet, “Les pouvoirs militaires des prefets du pretoires et leurs developpement progressif,” RBPhil 25 (1946–47), pp. 533–6.
6. Baillie Reynolds gives a maximum of 300–400 troops of all kinds in the castra peregrinorum, p. 177. Paribeni, “Dei milites frumentarii e de” 20 (1905), pp. 317ff. talks about “qualche centenaio: frumentarii.” Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service” p. 71, n. 28 puts the number at about 200; Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 152.
7. Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, p. 136.
8. Baillie Reynolds, “Troops Quartered in the Castra Peregrinorum,” Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service”; M. Clauss, Untersuchungen zu den principales des römischen Heeres von Augustus bis Diocletian. Cornicularii, speculatores, frumentarii (Bochum, 1973); F. Paschoud, “Frumentarii, agentes in rebus, magistriani, curiosi, veredarii; problèmes de terminologie,” Bonner Historia-Augusta Colloquium 1979/81 (Bonn, 1983), J.C. Mann, “The Organization of the frumentarii” ZPE 74 (1988), pp. 149–50; Austin and Rankov, Exploratio.
9. B. Dobson, “The Significance of the Centurion and Primipilaris,” ANRW vol. 2, 1, pp. 392–434. For the inscriptional evidence on frumentarii see Austin and Rankov, Exploratio, pp. 136–7, 150–4, 168–9, 201–2 and 219–20.
10. This theory was originally put forward by A. von Domaszewski, “Die Rangordnung des römischen Heeres,” Bonner Jahrbücher 117 (1908), p. 35; Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 71, n. 15 dismisses Domaszewski’s argument that they were recruited exclusively from the western provinces before the Severan dynasty, and cites the relevant inscriptional evidence for recruitment from the East. The argument is wrong about which side of the empire was more “civilized”. Domaszewski’s attitudes toward easterners would be familiar to Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
11. Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 67, citing G. Forni, II Reclutamento delle legioni da Augusto a Diocleziano (Rome, 1953), pp. 45ff., and Domazewski, Die Rangordnung, pp. 34ff.
12. Dio Cassius 79.14.1–4; W.V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 250.
13. Dio Cassius 79.39.2–3 and Herodian 5.4.7–8.
14. CIL 14.7; 14.125. An interesting inscription discovered during the work on Rome’s international airport at Fiumicino shows that in ad 210 a centurio frumentarius at Portus supervised the excavation of sand for use as ballast on ships. Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 72, n. 32. See also the comments of R. Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1960), pp. 302–3, for a recent discussion of the frumentarii as part of the imperial administration of the port. On the evidence linking frumentarii with the Appian Way and the importation of grain from Puteoli, see M. Rostovtzeff, “Frumentum,” RE 7 (1910), p. 181.
15. SHA, Hadrian 11.4.6.
16. Dvomik has suggested that one of the frumentarii may have been attached to every fire station but offers no evidence to support this conjecture.
17. Tertullian, De fuga. in pers. 13.3, who says that curiosi and beneficiarii kept lists of Christians subject to the vectigal levied on degrading professions: “you have Christians added to the tax lists of privileged soldiers and spies, along with hucksters, money changers, bath-thieves, gamblers and panderers.” Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 72, n. 33 disagrees with G. Lopuzanski, “La police romaine et les Chretiens,” Antiquité Classique Cl 20 (1951), pp. 8–12, who does not think these curiosi were frumentarii. Tertullian had a very definite class of officials in mind and frumentarii were closely associated with beneficiarii during the principate.
18. At Ostia, two brothers dedicated a relief on a column to the genius of the Castra Peregrina, their headquarters at Rome. Also by the harbors, a detachment of frumentarii set up a commemorative tablet to Alexander Severus and the imperial family. See Meiggs, Roman Ostia, p. 303.
19. On kollectiones see Rostovzteff, SEHRE (Oxford, 1957), vol. 2, p. 717, n. 31 and L. Robert, “Sur un papyrus de Bruxelles,” Rev. Ph 69 (1943), pp. 111–19. See W. Blum, Curiosi und Regendarii (Munich, 1969). F. Paschoud, “Frumentarii, agentes in rebus, magistriani, curiosi, veredarii; problèmes de terminologie,” Bonner Historia-Augusta Colloquium 1979/81 (Bonn, 1983). Paschoud examines five different agencies in the Roman Empire that were used at one time or another for policing duties. Relying on the inscriptional evidence over the literary, especially where the frumentarii are concerned, he does not see them as a detective force. He believes they were not as clearly defined nor well organized as the agentes in rebus. He considers neither the frumentarii nor the agentes in rebus as synonyms of curiosi. Cf. M. Clauss, Untersuchungen zu den principales des römischen Heeres von Augustus bis Diocletian. Cornicularii, speculatores, frumentarii (Bochum, 1973).
20. SHA, Julian 5.8; Commodus 4.5; Albinus 8.1.ff.
21. SHA, Commodus 4.5.
22. SHA, Commodus 4.5; Didius Julianus 5.8; Pescennius Niger 2.6. Cf. CIL 10 6657 = ILS 1387.
23. SHA, Alexander Severus 23.1.
24. SHA, Macrinus 12.4–5; Claudius 17.1.
25. SHA, Macrinus 12.4.
26. Herodian 3.5.4–5.
27. Dio Cassius 79.15.1
28. Dio Cassius 79.14.1–4. N.B. Rankov, “M. Oclatinius Adventus in Britain,” Britannia 18 (1987), pp. 243–9.
29. Acts 28:16.
30. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.40.
31. St Cyprian, Letters, 81.
32. Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 72, n. 40 does not believe the soldiers serving in civilian dress mentioned in P. Lat. Gen. 1 and Pliny Ep 7.25 are secret service agents in plain clothes. See J.F. Gilliam, “Paganus in ‘BGU’ 696,” AJPh 73 (1952), pp. 766ff., who disagrees with A. von Premerstein, Klio 3 (1903), p. 41.
33. CIL 11.1132; AE 1936, 61 for mines and quarries. Cf. CIL 11, 1332, 3.25, 12286; AE 1919, n. 126. For prisons: CIL 3 = ILS 2369 (in Ephesus), ILS 9473; CIL 3.1980 for public works: CIL 6.1063.
34. A frumentarius was in charge of building a schola for the speculatores of the I Adiutrix and II Adiutrix, serving on the staff of the governor of Pannonia Inferior at Aquincum: CIL 3.3524 = ILS 2375. Similarly, a centurio frumentarius had charge of the building, by legionary detachments, of a stretch of the city walls of Salonae, the capital of Dalmatia: CIL 3 1980 = ILS 2287.
35. A. von Domazewski, Die Rangordnung des römischen Heeres (Bonn, 1908), p. 34, Sinnigen, “Origins of the Frumentarii,” pp. 213–24, and Rankov, “M. Oclatinius Adventus”, p. 244 believed they did.
36. As evidence, they give an inscription from the reign of Hadrian of an officer who died at Rome and was commemorated by his colleagues as a “frumentarius of the emperor,” a “Frumentarius Augusti.” AE 1975.60. Cf. 1988.29 and ILS 9473. Another one describes himself as a “frumentarius of the emperor stationed at Lyon” (phroumentaris Augoustos, sic choras Lougdounou). AE 1927.84 = IGRR 3.80 = ILS 9476.
37. J.C. Mann p. 149 cites the partial list of members of the officium of the legate of Numidia in AE 1917, 18, 57, where five men are listed as ex-frumentarii.
38. See SHA, Didius Julianus 5.1 cited above. For other assassinations, see Acta Martyrorum, p. 52, ed. Ruinart; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6. 40; St. Cyprian, Letters 81.
39. Ps. Aelius Aristides, Regarding the Emperor 21, trans. Rostovtzeff, SEHRE, p. 454.
40. SHA, Claudius 17.1.
41. SHA, Max. & Balb. 10.2.
42. See Dvomik, Origins of Intelligence Services, Ch. 1, for the Persian service.
43. Cf. W.H.D. Frend, “A Third Century Inscription Relating to angareia in Phrygia,” Journal of Roman Studies 46 (1956), p. 52 shows that relations between military officials and the civilian population could still be friendly in the early third century. Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 69.
44. ILS 9474 with the comments of Rostovtzeff, SEHRE, p. 709, n. 7, and Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 69.
45. Sextus Aurelius Victor, Lib de Caes 39.44.
46. Rostovzteff, SEHRE, p. 412.
47. W. Ensslin, “Valerius (Diocletianus)” REW 7A (1948) 2455; Sinnigen, “Roman Secret Service,” p. 70.